ALTER EGOS . . .

I'm having a conversation with Mrs.G right now. She's sitting in an office at her husband's hospital, having accompanied him to work for part of the day, and is catching up on the reading she needs to do for the AP English class she's going to be teaching this fall (how envious am I?!). She writes about how strange and slightly impressive it is to see her hubby, Dr.G, at work -- slipping on his white lab coat, chatting up the medical terms with his co-workers, throwing around the multi-syllabic scientific-sounding words like it's child's play. Dr.G puts on his professional self and heads out to work. I can picture it, but it doesn't make sense to me. Isn't Dr.G the goofy guy who pulls his shorts up to his ribs, yanks his socks up to his knees, and shimmies around making funny faces at us all? How can it be that he actually goes forth and heals the sick? Huh! I'm impressed, but I'll believe it when I see it.

***

I went to college in New York City. Owning a car during college was not merely inefficient, it was just plain dumb. Whenever my friends and I had to venture somewhere -- and really, where would we go that wasn't on the all-inclusive island paradise known as Manhattan? -- we hailed a cab, jumped on a bus, rode the subway or simply walked. But occasionally, an event would arise -- an apple-picking trip upstate, a fellowship retreat in New Jersey -- where someone would have to drive a car. And on those occasions, I would sit in the passenger or back seat, watch my friend drive his or her car to our destination and wonder to myself "I didn't know s/he could drive!" Sometimes, I'd carry a murmur of panic with me for the entire ride, not completely sure that my friend was capable of driving safely. After all, wouldn't one get rusty after six months of not sitting behind the steering wheel? Other times, I would just marvel at the things that I had yet to find out about my friends.

***

Two of my close girlfriends are schoolteachers. JKA teaches 6th-grade language arts; Mrs.G teaches high school English. I live vicariously through them because I've always wanted to be a teacher. Unfortunately, I have neither the brain power nor the compassion nor the patience and endurance required by the position, so I stay away and leave it up to the professionals. That doesn't prevent me from wanting to be a fly on the wall in each of their classrooms, though. At NHF and during social events, JKA and Mrs.G are the life of the party, often the main players in a joke, a game, a discussion. As the summer winds down and I observe them preparing for their return to school, I wonder where the party girls will go. I try to imagine JKA controlling a bunch of crazed 6th-graders, reading to them, encouraging them to learn, all the while being a formative force in their young and impressionable lives. I try to picture Mrs.G, perhaps perched on the front edge of her desk like one of the cool English teachers I had during my own high school years, engaging her 12th-graders in a spirited discussion of "Crime and Punishment" or replaying scenes from "King Lear." It's too cool to daydream about, these teacher personalities that they'll put on from September to June.

***

One evening in L.A., we all took a drive to Dr.Y's hospital to do an ultrasound on the newly-pregnant Ha. We walked into the hospital at around 10:30pm, and I watched quietly, rocking Abby's stroller back and forth, as Dr.Y let us into the ultrasound room, turned on the machine, prepped Ha and started rolling the sensor over her belly. I stood in awe as Dr.Y pointed out the little pencil eraser-size dot that was Baby#2 and measured its tiny size. When the ultrasound was done, we accompanied Dr.Y back to the lab room where he could return the key. The two techs working that night greeted him and said goodnight to us as we walked out the door. "Good night, Dr.Y." "See you in the morning, Dr.Y." I looked around me. Who were they talking to? In every other environment I've shared with Dr.Y, he's just been Joe, Ha's husband, Abby's dad, the witty and loud guy who likes to tease me and give me agita. But at the hospital, they knew nothing of this Joe. He was simply Dr.Y, the radiologist. Crazy.

***

At home, I'm a bum. The moment I walk into my room after a day's work, everything gets thrown off, and the t-shirt and shorts come on. The hair goes up in a ponytail. The makeup gets wiped off. Until it's time to prepare for dinner, I putz around, pay my bills, read some magazines or books, lay on the couch and watch the news. I let my mom push me to eat more dinner. I hoot at the Yankee game on TV with my dad. I bring glasses of water to Gran. I slouch in my chair and rub my eyes when I get sleepy. My family mostly sees only this side of me. But on occasion, when our morning departure times overlap, my parents see me in a business suit or a clean pair of pants topped with a pressed shirt, my hair done and mostly in its place (at least until I step outside and the breeze gets it), my makeup not yet disturbed by me always touching my face. And those evenings, they'll say to me "You actually looked like a lawyer this morning." Yup. I clean up okay, and I kind of like my alter ego, too.